There are points at which somebody’s difference of opinion steps over the line into just not being on the same planet in terms of conversation – and Austrian School economics falls into that category. It sounds like economics, and it’s easier to understand because it doesn’t include all that obtuse maths, but it’s no more economics than Objectivism is philosophy (and oh, how I enjoyed arguing that point on USENET in the 90′s).

You know how you argument with people like, say scientologists and they start off rationally talking. Then, ten minutes into the conversation they say something which makes makes you go “No, wait – how the HELL did we get here?” It’s an epistomological issue, a category error. You assumed you were talking about how to feel better about your life. They, on the other hand, knew you were both talking about Xenu. Those kinds of conversations are like a Venn diagram where two circles don’t meet.

In the face of that, most of us have to come up with rules of thumb like “well, they don’t use maths, so they must be crAAzy”. In terms of competing schools where at least some groups on either side respect the other’s opinions, criticism like Bryan Caplan‘s (or wandering further afield, Brad deLong) is more useful than those sort of broad strokes.

“Two, you can definitely pluck out a minority of economists who *do* presumably know something about economics, and who have advocated for a return to the gold standard.”

As that Wikipedia entry states, “followers of the Austrian School of Economics, objectivists and libertarians”. There’s a reason they’re in the minority of economists. It’s because they’re whackos. As the Wikipedia entry on the Austrian school says, “Austrian theories are not formulated in formal mathematical form, but using verbal logic.”

Economists who don’t use maths. Hmm. What do you think?

Dear anon, “There are lots and lots of I-want-to-run-your-life conservatives”. Yup, Right Wing Authoritarians are extremely dangerous. Not only do they have no morals and no sense of society but they want to tell you what to do *to further their ends* not yours. They’re almost literally a cancer in the body politic.

Take the Political Compass quadrant. Left-Right, Social-Individual across the page. Authoritarian, Libertarian from top to bottom. I bet you and most well informed, educated people end up dead centre and just below the middle line. We prefer not to be told what to do, but we recognise that some people do need to be for the good of society. We appreciate the improvements to quality of life that arise from capitalist, free market thinking but think that some aspects of life get worse with this and some social ethics are needed to balance corporate/individual ethics. But unfortunately while this makes us fairly mainstream Guardian readers in the UK, it makes us rabid “liberal” (as a term of abuse) socialists in the USA.

Just as well since I was already proving on my own person that the pompous speechifying is the last thing to go.

Oh, I hang out with liberals a lot, and I dare say I am one from a distance. I’d vote for Obama, if I could. But I feel uncomfortable with a lot of the liberal line in the US at least, so I don’t think I can self-identify. Maybe at some point we can FIGHT and DRINK over it…